January 2019 – if you’re in or around Napa California, drop into the Napa Lighted Festival which runs in the second two weeks of the month. Various members of the Ordered Universe team will be participating with a series of talks and activities in the afternoons and evenings of the 17th, 18th, 19th. We’re thrilled by the invitation to work for and with the Festival, which came about through Ross Ashton and Karen Monid of The Projection Studio. With a festival theme of Beyond, we’ll be working with Ross and Karen on a new projection show drawing on Grosseteste’s cosmological treatises: Horizon. On the Six ‘Diffeertiae’, On the Sphere, and others will feature in the new piece, under development at the moment. Taking research from the seminar-room to a different audience, in partnership with artistic collaborators is a fascinating and exhilarating experience. We’re very much looking forward to working with the Parks and Recreation Department in Napa to bring the best that we can to the city.

The team members heading to Napa include a representative slice of our research interests, and three of our other artistic collaborators: Giles Gasper (History), Joshua Harvey (Psychology/Engineering), Brian Tanner (Physics), Luke Fidler (Art History), with Cate Watkinson (Glass Art), Colin Rennie (Glass Art) and Alexandra Carr (Multi-media Sculpture). We’ll be joined by our new colleague Henrike Lange from University of California, Berkeley, and Andy Hook, from Blackfriars Restaurant in Newcastle. We’ll be curating a series of talks, collaborative readings, demonstrations and so forth on the horizons of medieval and modern science, artistic inspiration from the past, medieval food tasting sessions at the Napa campus of the Culinary Institute of America, and a little bit on medieval wine in the wonderful setting of Napa. As the programme develops we’ll let you know what we’re up to.